Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

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phins
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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by phins »

Joe Shlabotnik wrote:
May 28 23, 8:21 am
phins wrote:
May 28 23, 8:00 am
Radbird wrote:
May 26 23, 2:50 pm
So if Graceffo and McGreevy are up in 2025, rotation problem solved, amiright? Especially if Hence is ahead of schedule
They’re both looking like fringe starters to long relievers.

Cards have a ton of relievers and corners. Need up-the-middle talent and bat missers in the rotation.

Hopefully a consolidation trade will net them an arm that is controlled past this year.
Who would you part with in that kind of trade?
We have OF’ers for days. Whomever they liked best outside of Walker and Nootbar.

Carlson, TON, Burleson, Yepez, whatever their flavor off the big club. Then I’d listen on most anyone other than Walker and Winn in the minors. I’m hesitant to trade Herrera because I like him and his data is good.

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by Magneto2.0 »

phins wrote:
May 28 23, 9:02 am
Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 28 23, 8:25 am
I always take these list with grain of salt, because nobody knows. I always look as Spencer Strider as a recent example.

Fangraphs had Strider as a 45+ FV prospect coming into 2022

Baseballprospectus in 2022 said Strider would be a bullpen arm because they said he had no secondary offerings

in 2022 Keith Law had Strider as the Braves 12th best prospect, and if he developed a secondary pitch and changed his arm slot he could POTENTIALLY be a league average starter

People writing these list do their best to project, but it's really really difficult to know. So never get too caught up in it.
Picking out outliers to form your viewpoint is probably not the best strategy.

No one knows the future with 100% certainty. Of course.

The case with Strider is he turned into a completely different player. Banking on that will be difficult.

The only thing you can do is evaluate in the here and now, use data to identify players who might be that tweak away from transforming, then hoping for positive variance.
He's an outlier on the extreme end, sure, but MLB is littered with players who were not highly touted prospects and are 3+ win players,. We have one on our team now (Edman). Hell, Goldy was considered a "meh" prospect too.

It's not that these people making the list are stupid or don't know what they're talking about, it's that projecting long term is damn near impossible. How will you ever know what players will make the proper adjustments? Develop skills sets like plate discipline or added velocity? You can't know. That's my only point. It's not to downplay the amount of research that goes into curating these lists, it's just to bring some perspective. I feel like sometimes we look at these list and just accept them as fact rather than conjecture.

phins
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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by phins »

Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 28 23, 9:48 am
phins wrote:
May 28 23, 9:02 am
Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 28 23, 8:25 am
I always take these list with grain of salt, because nobody knows. I always look as Spencer Strider as a recent example.

Fangraphs had Strider as a 45+ FV prospect coming into 2022

Baseballprospectus in 2022 said Strider would be a bullpen arm because they said he had no secondary offerings

in 2022 Keith Law had Strider as the Braves 12th best prospect, and if he developed a secondary pitch and changed his arm slot he could POTENTIALLY be a league average starter

People writing these list do their best to project, but it's really really difficult to know. So never get too caught up in it.
Picking out outliers to form your viewpoint is probably not the best strategy.

No one knows the future with 100% certainty. Of course.

The case with Strider is he turned into a completely different player. Banking on that will be difficult.

The only thing you can do is evaluate in the here and now, use data to identify players who might be that tweak away from transforming, then hoping for positive variance.
He's an outlier on the extreme end, sure, but MLB is littered with players who were not highly touted prospects and are 3+ win players,. We have one on our team now (Edman). Hell, Goldy was considered a "meh" prospect too.

It's not that these people making the list are stupid or don't know what they're talking about, it's that projecting long term is damn near impossible. How will you ever know what players will make the proper adjustments? Develop skills sets like plate discipline or added velocity? You can't know. That's my only point. It's not to downplay the amount of research that goes into curating these lists, it's just to bring some perspective. I feel like sometimes we look at these list and just accept them as fact rather than conjecture.
Fair. On the whole, the lists are great. From a micro level, there are so many outcomes on the ledger it's going to have the pop-ups everywhere. You just can't predict them with any success, so you evaluate the tools and project an overall average range of development for each.

It's pretty clear to me, the Cardinals pitching philosophy is to grab as many of the athletic strike throwers they can. Then let variance and weighted ball training have a few explode into more.

There are a dozen prospects currently in the Cardinals' pitching pipeline that fit that mold.

Liberatore
Graceffo
McGreevy
Hjerpe
Connor Thomas
Ian Bedell
Brycen Mautz
Pete Hansen
Max Rajcic
Inohan Paniagua
Hancel Rincon
Cade Winquest

The hope is that with continued mechanical tweaks one or two of them will move into another tier of starting pitcher prospect. Either through velocity jumping at an unexpected rate, or through an angle change that allows the pitches to play up.

In reality, it's a smart strategy due to what you're talking about; we just don't know who will explode and have an uptick. The downside, of course, is that you don't get any lottery tickets to hit, you're left with a whole lot of AAAA starters with the stuff to get AA hitters out, but who stall out that level and you don't have anything missing bats at a level you need on a ML staff.

They've tried some of the high variance arm strength types and have almost completely whiffed in recent years, so I'm sure that has scared them some. The real hit has been Tink Hence, but they haven't even let him off the leash at all yet, which concerns me. What do they know there that we don't?

Austin Love is a bully with a huge frame who has impressed me and I hope he can improve his conditioning to a point where he improves his fastball command and smooth his mechanics.

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

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My big disappointment on the list is that they see Joshua Baez as having 20 grade hit tool. That is not going to work if it's true.

The Cardinals are going to take fewer of those bets if recent history plays into it. Tre Fletcher, Josh Baez, Ryan Holgate, etc. Both Fletcher and Holgate have already been released.

You simply cannot be giving $2.25M to compensation players and having them not even making a prospect list (by far the best scouted and most well-reasoned list out there) two years later.

Frankly, the archetype that the Cardinals continue to do well with are the grinders who have tons of baseball IQ, position utility, and bat-to-ball skills. Look at their draft classes under this current regime and it is clear how well they do with that type of player and how poorly they do with the players who need to develop actual baseball acumen with a more toolsy skillset.

They have depth prospects up-and-down the line because of their ability to develop high floor guys and they tend to outperform these modest projections, again, through sheer variance. Even if a guy is only up for a year or two with solid performance, there are so many of them, another replaces them seamlessly when they need the next one. It's quite impressive and why their prospect pools are always underrated by publications who are looking more for star players and undersell the variance in play for players like Brendan Donovan, Tommy Edman, Paul DeJong to pop into above league average players for minimal investment.

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

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I think I agree with your post, but not sure I fully understand the categories/differentiation between (my words) high risk/high upside masher and lower ceiling/higher floor grinder. Gorman was always very highly considered, but would you count him in the former grouping as a success?
What about Baker and what he’s doing this year?

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by Magneto2.0 »

Phansett wrote:
May 28 23, 1:33 pm
I think I agree with your post, but not sure I fully understand the categories/differentiation between (my words) high risk/high upside masher and lower ceiling/higher floor grinder. Gorman was always very highly considered, but would you count him in the former grouping as a success?
What about Baker and what he’s doing this year?
Luken Baker has 15 HRs and a 1.053 OPS in Triple A. But he's also 26.

He can definitely have a Patrick Wisdom trajectory. Late to the majors, but mashes for a few years, but minimal value outside of that.

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 28 23, 2:42 pm
Phansett wrote:
May 28 23, 1:33 pm
I think I agree with your post, but not sure I fully understand the categories/differentiation between (my words) high risk/high upside masher and lower ceiling/higher floor grinder. Gorman was always very highly considered, but would you count him in the former grouping as a success?
What about Baker and what he’s doing this year?
Luken Baker has 15 HRs and a 1.053 OPS in Triple A. But he's also 26.

He can definitely have a Patrick Wisdom trajectory. Late to the majors, but mashes for a few years, but minimal value outside of that.
Trade bait for a quality pitcher?

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by Magneto2.0 »

Joe Shlabotnik wrote:
May 28 23, 2:48 pm
Magneto2.0 wrote:
May 28 23, 2:42 pm
Phansett wrote:
May 28 23, 1:33 pm
I think I agree with your post, but not sure I fully understand the categories/differentiation between (my words) high risk/high upside masher and lower ceiling/higher floor grinder. Gorman was always very highly considered, but would you count him in the former grouping as a success?
What about Baker and what he’s doing this year?
Luken Baker has 15 HRs and a 1.053 OPS in Triple A. But he's also 26.

He can definitely have a Patrick Wisdom trajectory. Late to the majors, but mashes for a few years, but minimal value outside of that.
Trade bait for a quality pitcher?
I definitely would put him in a trade for a quality starter. I feel like he's a weird fit for this team already full of weird fits.

He couldn't be a headline for an elite starter like Bieber, but a trade with let's say Masyn Winn as the headline and Baker as a secondary piece with another prospect could work.

phins
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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by phins »

Phansett wrote:
May 28 23, 1:33 pm
I think I agree with your post, but not sure I fully understand the categories/differentiation between (my words) high risk/high upside masher and lower ceiling/higher floor grinder. Gorman was always very highly considered, but would you count him in the former grouping as a success?
What about Baker and what he’s doing this year?
Gorman and Walker are a different archetype because they were high draft guys who fell. Power being their carrying tool is true, but they’re not the archetype of Fletcher, Holgate, Baez who are over slot types or college performers who were drafted a little higher than expected and had borderline unplayable hit tools.

When I speak of lottery ticket types, that’s not the top-10 types who fall due to a bad spring. I’m speaking to the go over slot on day two types who are power over hit or power arm/frame bets with no control.

They’ve been pretty atrocious with both types over the past several years. The types they’ve done well with, which are the types who get a lot less attention and probably don’t give the front office the shine they deserve, are the grinder types who have their tools play up with baseball IQ or through tool accentuation outside of the hit tool.

Nootbar, Donovan, DeJong, Burleson, Edman, etc. have fallen into that on the position side.

Coincidentally, the tools bets on power over hit types that have paid off are all the ones they’ve let go. Arozarena, Adolis Garcia, etc.

This team is what I love to talk about with sports, so thanks for the engagement.

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Re: Fangraphs' List of Cardinals' Top 32 Prospects

Post by phins »

Yeah, Luken Baker is a type like Patrick Wisdom (another name I could’ve put above with Garcia and Arozarena.

You hope he can have a couple of years of corner bat value before you non-tender etc.

There is a bit of value in that, but not really anything more than a sweetener.

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